Michelle M. Sauer, PhD

(Distinguished Professor/Endowed Chair)

Dr. Michelle M. Sauer, Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor, is Professor of English & Gender Studies and the Coordinator of the Linguistics program at the University of North Dakota. Her main research interests include medieval Christian devotional literature, especially in the North Atlantic, with a particular focus on anchorites, hermits, and monastics. She also publishes regularly on mysticism, asceticism, hagiography, queer/gender theory, spatial theory, and the history of Christianity. She is the editor or co-editor of a number of book series and journals, including Cambridge Elements in Women & Gender, New Queer Medievalisms, and the Journal of Medieval Worlds, and serves on the Advisory Board of several others. She is also the recipient of numerous awards in research, education, and service, including being named a Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor; accepting the Thomas J. Clifford Award for Outstanding Faculty Scholar in Research at UND; being awarded the Southeastern Medieval Association Individual Scholarship Award; receiving the Presidential Scholars Star Faculty award twice; being named the YMCA Woman of the Year; and, being nominated for both the graduate and undergraduate teaching awards several times, both at UND and Minot State University. Several of her publications have been nominated for and/or won awards, including Best Reference Text of the Year (Booklist) for Companion to British Poetry before 1600; the LGBT-Religious Archives Network prize for “Representing the Negative: Positing the Lesbian Void & Medieval English Anchoritism”; and being the runner-up for “Best Feminist Article” for “Architecture of Desire: Mediating the Female Gaze in the Medieval English Anchorhold.” As of this time, she has published or has forthcoming 18 volumes, including monographs and collections, 6 special issues of journals, and 100 articles excluding specialized encyclopedia articles of which she has written more than 100 as well. Some publications include the books Gender in Medieval Culture (Bloomsbury, 2015), The Companion to Sexuality in the Medieval West (ARC Humanities, 2025, with Jenny C. Bledsoe), The Lesbian Premodern (Palgrave, 2011, with Diane Watt and Noreen Giffney), The Materiality of Anchoritic Devotion (ARC Humanities, 2021, with Jenny C. Bledsoe), How to Write about Chaucer (Chelsea House, 2009), and The Companion to Pre-1600 British Poetry (Facts on File, 2008). Current projects include a monograph on solitary sexuality, a micrograph on the medieval anchoritic tradition (ARC 2027), and several edited collections.